Variety of apples available for picking

Toll’s Apple Orchard, recently renamed The Apple Orchard Museum, is located south of the Thomas E. Ricks Building. It spans five acres of land and contains 400 apple trees and 150 apple varieties.

Between 100 and 200 students and community members come to the Apple Orchard Museum daily.

“You won’t find either a Gala or Fuji apple, [but] you will find many apples with similar qualities that you will never find in a grocery store,” said Zak Noriega, a sophomore studying horticulture, on the BYU-Idaho Horticulture Plant Shop Facebook page.

Cameo, Wealthy, Paula Red, Lodi, Jonathan, Earlichief and Mystery are some of their less commercial apples.
Each tree is labeled with the name, flavor and best use for each type of apple. Flavors vary in sweetness and tartness, and apples can be crisp or hard.

Jerry Toll, head of the Horticulture Department, said the best way to enjoy the apple orchard is to taste each type of apple, discard undesirable ones and learn about the apples’ origins.

The Apple Orchard Museum is open Monday through Saturday, usually from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Picking buckets, ladders and weigh station are located in a shed on the northwest corner of the orchard. The orchard doesn’t provide bags to take apples home.

There is also a pay station inside the shed with instructions on how to weigh the apples and fill out a payment form. Customers pay $.50 per pound.

Students are encouraged to pay with their I-Card number, and the total will be charged to their BYU-I student account.

Toll said that the orchard is an “on your honor” business. The money the orchard makes every year helps pay for student employment and research.

The Apple Orchard was planted in 1979 to test what fruit trees can grow in the eastern Idaho climate.